Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant #1)(70)

She raised her chin. “We can’t replicate it, we don’t know how they made it, or what the hell it is made of.”

Great. “Is it steel?”

“Possibly,” Radion said.

“There’s no evidence of rust and it hasn’t been oiled, so it may be some form of stainless,” Edmund said. “It’s non-magnetic, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Stainless steel comes in two types, austenitic and ferritic,” Gwendolyn said. “It has to do with atomic structure. They both form a cube on the molecular level, but austenitic steel is face-centered. It’s a cube with an atom in each corner and in the center of each cube’s faces. Ferritic steel is body-centered, with an atom in each corner and one atom in the center of the cube.”

“Austenitic steel doesn’t respond to magnets,” Radion explained.

“We weighed it,” Edmund added. “It’s running too light for stainless steel.”

“But then we ground it,” Gwendolyn said. “And it sparks like steel does.”

“We also filed it,” Radion said. “It’s almost as hard as steel but it’s flexible.”

“And we dropped 45% phosphoric acid on it, and it didn’t bubble, so it’s definitely not a low-chromium steel,” Edmund finished.

Hugh fought an urge to put his hand on his face. “So it may or may not be steel?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“Is it metal? Can you tell me that?”

“Yes,” Radion said.

“It’s a metal alloy of some kind,” Gwendolyn said.

Fantastic. Good that we cleared that up.

“How can we know for sure?” Elara asked.

“We have to send it off to a lab in Lexington,” Edmund said. “For photoelectric flame photometry or atomic absorption spectroscopy.”

“Both,” Radion said. “We should do both.”

“I agree,” Gwendolyn said.

Here it comes. Three, two, one…

“How much will it cost?” Elara asked.

Right on cue.

The three smiths shrugged.

“Find out,” she said. “When you do, take it to the Preceptor. He will approve or deny the expense and arrange for the security for the transfer to Lexington.”

Wow. That was new. Apparently, the key to Elara’s bank account was saving children from monsters in the dark woods.

“We could bird it,” Radion said. “They’d need a very small sample. A carrier pigeon should be able to handle it.”

“We may do that,” Elara said. “Talk to the Preceptor when you have something concrete.” She turned to him.

“You have tonight with it,” he told them. “Tomorrow, as soon as our guests leave, the armor is going up on targets and we’re going to cut it and shoot it.”

The three smiths drew a collective breath. Gwendolyn paled. Radion gave him a horrified look.

“We don’t need to know how it was made,” Hugh said. “We need to know how to break it.”

“But it’s like painting over the Mona Lisa,” Gwendolyn said.

Right. Pissing off all three smiths at the same time wasn’t a good idea.

“You can keep one,” he told them. “When we figure out how to crack it, I promise you all the armor you can stand.”

“Can we have the beat-up armor after you’re done?” Gwendolyn asked.

Hugh almost sighed. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Radion said. “We can live with that.”





Elara strode down the hallway. The after-battle jitters had morphed into unease, then outright dread. Exhaustion set in, as if a massive weight rested on her shoulders and kept getting heavier and heavier.

Quick footsteps echoed behind her.

Just what she needed. Elara caught a sigh before it gave her away. She didn’t have the energy for verbal sparring right this second.

Hugh caught up with her.

“How much do you want to spend on tests?” he asked, falling in step with her. “Give me a ceiling.”

She almost pinched herself. “How badly do we need them?”

“We don’t need them at all,” he said. “We don’t have to know what the armor is made of. We need to know how to break it and we’ll find that out tomorrow. Basically, how much money do you want to spend to keep the smiths happy?”

Thinking was too difficult, and making a decision was even harder. “A thousand. Fifteen hundred at most.”

They started up the staircase.

“More than I would’ve given them,” Hugh said.

“Since when are you fiscally responsible?”

“I spend money to keep us alive.”

She almost groaned. “Please don’t start about the moat, Hugh, I can’t take it right now.”

“Begging? Not like you. What’s bothering you?” he asked.

She missed her magic. It was her shield and her weapon; she felt naked without it. She wanted it so badly, it was almost a physical pain. This was wrong, Elara reminded herself. She tried to push the need out of her mind, but it refused to leave. The stakes were too high to give in to magic cravings. If she did, it would undo her in the end.